Meet Bishop Eaton

The Rev. Elizabeth A. Eaton was elected as the ELCA’s fourth presiding bishop at the 2013 ELCA Churchwide Assembly. Born in Cleveland on April 2, 1955, Eaton earned a Master of Divinity degree from Harvard Divinity School...

Luther and Lutheranism

Martin Luther was eight years old when Christopher Columbus set sail from Europe and landed in the Western Hemisphere. Luther was a young monk and priest when Michaelangelo was painting the Sistine Chapel in Rome...

ELCA Good Gifts Catalog

Assignment Process

Assignment completes candidacy for all people, including those ordained in another Lutheran church or Christian tradition, moving them toward first call and admittance to the appropriate roster in the ELCA...

The Case for Personal Story

Richard L. Thulin

08/01/2008

[1] Reactions to the use of personal stories in the pulpit are
easy to come by. Many of these reactions, it must be
admitted, are strongly negative. They vary from mild hesitation to
outright rejection. Such reactions, informed or otherwise, must be
taken seriously. Even those that seem overstated signal a potential
danger. Traps await those who choose to share an autobiographical
tale from the pulpit.

[2] Many who warn against the use of personal story in the
pulpit rightly focus on the purpose of Christian preaching. We are
in the pulpit to preach Christ, they insist. If stories are to be a
part of Christian proclamation, they assert, such stories must be
about Jesus and about what God has revealed and accomplished
through him. Such a warning recognizes the inherent power of
narrative to engage the listener in a unique way. It also points,
however, to a danger inherent in the use of personal story for
preaching. Unless it is used appropriately, the personal
story can dominate the sermon in such a way that it obstructs
Christian proclamation. It is possible for a personal story to call
such attention to the preacher that he or she becomes the center of
focus. If this happens, the preacher is proclaimed and not Christ.
And that would constitute narcissism at its self-aggrandizing
worst.

[3] Critics of pulpit autobiography also point to the fact that
Christian preaching is always a word to others. It must be a word
that places its hearers under the judgment and grace of God. In
essence, it is a dialogic word and not a monologic one. It is
clearly possible for the personal story to fall into the trap of
privatism. The tale shared may be so idiosyncratic that the
listener finds it impossible to make connections between the
preacher's story and his or her own. If this occurs, the preacher
is no longer preaching. The sermon has become nothing more than a
public form of self-expression. The listeners are placed as
eavesdroppers to secrets they did not want to hear and about which
they do not know what to do.

[4] The isolation of the preacher's story from the stories of
the congregation is a very real danger. So is the isolation of the
preacher's story from the rest of the sermon and from the biblical
text that provides the basis for the sermon. Complaints against
pulpit autobiography often focus on this isolation: "What in the
world did that tale have to do with the rest of the sermon?" "Where
in the world did that story connect with the biblical story?" What
really bothers those who level such complaints is that the rest of
the sermon and the biblical story usually suffer from such
isolation. Listeners remember the isolated tale and forget what was
to have been the main point.

[5] The dangers of narcissism, privatism, and isolation are
real. To fall prey to any or all of them is not a matter of
indifference. Each militates against the nature and purpose of
Christian preaching. Some preachers may be unaware of these
dangers, but others are so aware of them that they refuse to even
consider personal story as a sermonic option. Still other preachers
are aware of the dangers to the extent that they are inhibited from
acting on the attraction they feel for autobiographical narrative.
As real as the dangers are, however, they should not keep preachers
from exploring the possibilities of personal story. Nor should such
dangers be allowed to ban personal story from the pulpit. The traps
are not inevitable-they can be avoided. It is possible for personal
story to proclaim Christ, to place its hearers under the judgment
and grace of God, to be an integral part of the sermon, and to
accurately express the biblical text. The traps are not inevitable.
They can be avoided through awareness, skill, and practice.

[6] Gaining even partial mastery over the use of personal story
for preaching is well worth the effort. Some of us have learned
that pulpit autobiography offers dividends far beyond what we ever
imagined. A personal tale can do far more than add a note of human
interest to the sermon or arrest the straying attention of an
audience. The use of pulpit autobiography can help bolster the
sagging authority of the pulpit. It does so, in part, by placing
the preacher where she or he needs to stand in relation to the
tradition and community of the church.

PERSONAL STORY AND AUTHORITY

[7] I learned something crucial about a preacher's authority as
far back as my intern year as a seminary student. For twelve months
I served as an assistant in a five-church parish and as an
associate chaplain in a small church-sponsored hospital. My first
visit to a patient was to an elderly woman confined to the bed of a
private room. I had not had formal training in pastoral care and
felt somewhat uneasy, yet I was sure that my youthful exuberance
would carry the day. Enthusiastically I entered the room,
introduced myself, and asked the woman how she was feeling. Her
answer came in two words: "I'm dying." I was not at all certain how
to respond and I did the only thing that came to mind. I asked
her how she knew that she was dying. Again, her answer was brief.
"My doctor told me," she said. I think I mumbled, "I'm sorry,"
because I could manage nothing else. Suddenly, the woman asked me a
question. "Son," she said, "do you believe that there is life after
death?" My mind raced and my tongue did its best to keep up. I
quoted the Bible, bits and pieces from what I could recall from a
course in dogmatics, and just about anything else that popped into
my head. In the middle of my rambling, the woman took my hand. She
said, "Son, that's all very nice-but that isn't what I asked you.
What I need to know is whether or not you believe that there is
life after death." That woman contributed to my understanding of
ministry and its authority more than she could ever imagine. She
gave me one of the greatest gifts I have ever received. She forced
me to speak out of my own Christian experience, out of my own
tumultuous life of faith and doubt.

[8] In that hospital room I discovered what I have repeatedly
discovered in the pulpit. In preaching, as in other forms of
pastoral ministry, the preacher cannot hide. People demand a clear
and honest word from the one who speaks. That demand will not be
met by a barrage of Bible verses or by a host of brilliant
quotations from recognized theologians. That demand will be met
only when the preacher speaks the truth out of his or her own
life.

[9] I do not remember exactly what I said to the hospitalized
woman who asked me to speak out of my own belief. I am sure that I
did not share a well-crafted story from my life experience. No
doubt I spoke in bits and pieces. I am almost certain, however,
that I was working toward an autobiographical narrative. I
remember, for example, telling her about the death of my
grandmother-the telephone call in the middle of the night, the
hushed voices of my mother and father, my child's reaction to the
simple words, "Grandma is dead." I know that I told her of my
prayers thanking God that "Grandma is with you forever," and of my
lively expectation that Grandma and I will be together again beyond
all separation. And I remember that when I left her room the dying
woman said, "Thank you. You told me what I needed to hear."

[10] From that woman I learned the crucial fact that a
preacher's authority is a personal authority. This may not always
have been as obvious as it is in the contemporary world.
People will not listen seriously to what a minister says simply
because he or she is ordained and speaks with the authority of the
church. Nor will people be receptive to what a minister says simply
because she or he quotes from the Bible or from the writings of
some significant theologian. What catches the ear and urges
response is the voice of a living witness. What is needed is the
voice of one who can testify to the accuracy of what he or she
speaks. Not because it has been read somewhere or because it has
been overheard, but because it speaks the truth about one's own
life, and because it speaks the truth from the details of one's own
life. It is a voice of conviction supported by a life story.

[11] Authority is more readily granted to preachers who attempt
to honestly connect personal life with the biblical and theological
tradition. Authority is less readily granted to preachers who
simply talk about their lives per se. It is granted to preachers
who can talk from their own lives in terms of the presence and
activity of God attested to by Scripture and theology alike. Such a
granting of authority is not strange. Preaching is the
self-expression of the church. In its preachers the church becomes
conscious of itself as the inheritor of a tradition and as the
living witness to that tradition. The preacher represents both the
tradition and a present community of the faithful. On behalf of the
tradition, the preacher introduces, clarifies, amplifies, and
asserts what it is that the church believes. On behalf of the
congregation, the preacher examines the tradition and questions the
experiential grounds for continuing to believe the church's faith.
When this happens, the church is most clearly part of a living
tradition. When this happens, the church is at its self-conscious
best.

[12] By using personal story, a preacher can effectively fulfill
his or her task as representative of both tradition and
congregation. Personal story enables one to show what is believed
and to demonstrate why this is the case. To be sure, this means
sharing a personal opinion about the inherited tradition. Personal
opinion, however, does not necessitate privatism. Indeed, if the
preacher serves as representative of the congregation as well as of
the tradition, her or his voice will not be idiosyncratic.

[13] Part of the preacher's responsibility to speak as a
representative of the congregation is met by examining the
tradition and providing clues for the experiential basis for its
claims. Another part of that same task is to speak from the common
life to the common life. Many preachers have discovered that
personal story is a fit vehicle for such speech. Personal story can
effectively demonstrate that the preacher knows what it is
like to be human in that time and place. Personal story can
assure a congregation that they have been listened to and heard,
that their hopes and their fears, their successes and their
failures, their faithfulness and their neglect are placed firmly
within the church's tradition. Personal story can lend a unique
credibility and thus establish a preacher's authority as one "who
knows what it's like."

PERSONAL STORY AND THE PREACHER

[14] Personal story can constitute an authoritative word and
thus assist effective pulpit proclamation. In addition, the process
by which personal stories are selected and crafted can offer
substantial benefits to the individual preacher. For example, the
process of connecting life story with church tradition is a
theological activity. The preacher who struggles to establish such
a relationship is functioning as a theologian. She or he is working
to make sense of inherited truth, to find reciprocal access between
the faith and experienced human life. Theological thinking involves
more than repeating crystallized statements of doctrine. It
involves sensing the human experience out of which doctrine arises
and for which doctrine should serve as a catalyst. An attempt to
interweave personal story and church tradition enables preachers to
actively engage their theological task.

[15] Some years ago a student in one of my classes preached a
sermon on justification by grace through faith. He repeated all the
right concepts in a nicely structured presentation. Both he and the
class felt that he had fulfilled his theological task with
distinction. During class discussion of the sermon, I asked the
student preacher if he could tell us what it felt like to be
justified. "I don't understand what you mean," he said. "Well," I
responded, "you have just spent twenty minutes telling us about
God's justifying act. We assume that you have experienced that act.
Simply tell us about it. What difference, for example, has it made
in your life?"

[16] Only after considerable reflection was the student able to
give an answer. He did so by telling us of a violent breakfast
argument between himself and his wife. He left his home so angry
that he did not care if he ever saw his wife again. During the day
he came to realize that he had provoked the argument. His mood
changed from anger to fear. He grew fearful of going home, certain
that his wife would not be there or that she would be withdrawn and
beyond reach. It was after dark when he nervously opened the front
door. His wife heard him and came running. She threw her arms
around his neck, kissed him, and said, "Welcome home!"

[17] "Is that," the student asked, "what you had in mind?" I did
not have to say a word. The class was overwhelmed. "Why didn't you
say that in the sermon?" someone asked. "That's what I call
bringing the theological truth to life," said another. Both were
right. The student had talked theology in the sermon. He did not do
theology, however, until he began to connect God's gift of
undeserved grace with that gift of grace offered him by his
wife.

[18] When preachers do theology by connecting life story and
church tradition they receive a benefit beyond the satisfaction of
performing an essential task. Week by week, for an entire lifetime,
they can work at retrieving their own stories and seeing them in
the light of God's work. For many, this has been the major
spiritual discipline and the center of their growth in faith. They
understand that the very nature of the preaching task calls them to
notice their own lives, to evaluate them in light of the judgment
and grace of God, and to reshape them in line with what God has
revealed.

[19] For several years, I have required students in my preaching
classes to focus on their personal response to biblical texts. I
ask them to share with the rest of us their emotional,
intellectual, and behavioral responses. I invite them to share
recollections, incidents recalled by association with what the
biblical text says and does. I am always surprised by the variety
and range of the recall. I am more surprised, though, by the
blessing that such a simple exercise seems to be. Some students
claim that they rarely receive such an invitation. Few people seem
interested in what sense, if any, the students are making out of
their lives in terms of God. Thus they are delighted by the chance
to remember and share. Most of all, though, the students are amazed
by what the texts release to their consciousness. Events long
forgotten are remembered. People and places long out of sight
appear. Words long muffled are heard once again. Such anamnesis is
a blessing in itself. But the texts that serve as catalyst for the
memory also interpret and contextualize what is remembered. The
texts provide eyes and ears by which the recalled can be seen and
heard in a new way. The texts invite rememberers to comprehend
their daily lives as places where God actively works. And the
students find themselves blessed again.

[20] There are preachers who carry out this kind of dialogue
between text and personal life week after week. They do it in
preparation for preaching. They also do it as a way of centering
themselves, of keeping themselves alive to the presence and work of
God in their own lives and beyond. Attentive to their own stories,
they become more attentive to the stories of others. Aware of the
presence of God in their own lives, they become more aware of God's
presence in the lives of others. Many preachers have told me that
this kind of dialogue is so important to them that they would
continue it even if they were to stop preaching. It gives them back
their own lives and connects them to others. It reveals God as the
center of every life.

This is Christ's church.

There is a place for you here.
We are the church that shares a living, daring confidence in God's grace. Liberated by our faith, we embrace you as a whole person — questions, complexities and all. Join us as we do God's work in Christ's name for the life of the world.